Midnight Mike
2010-08-09, 07:39 AM
How public worker pensions are too rich for New York's - and America's - blood
He did nothing illegal. At 44, Hugo Tassone retired from the Yonkers police force with an annual pension of $101,333 - thanks to overtime pay he tacked on to his $74,000 salary. Tassone told The New York Times it was the pension he could collect after 20 years of service that attracted him to the job in the first place.
He’s not alone. In the last decade, half of the police and firefighters who retired in Yonkers collected pensions that exceeded their base pay, in (at least one case) by as much as 75%.
Don’t blame the officers. New York’s pension rules make it pay more to retire than to work. And the horrible habits here are a window on a national pension picture that’s looking more disastrous by the day.
The bill is now coming due.
Professor Joshua Rauh of Northwestern University projects that even if public sector plans earn 8% on their investments, four states - Illinois, New Jersey, Connecticut and Indiana - will run out of assets to pay retirees by the end of the decade. States and local governments will soon find themselves up against a painful tradeoff: between closing schools and libraries and cutting other essential services or paying inflated pensions to 50-year-old retirees.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/08/08/2010-08-08_how_public_worker_pensions_are.html#ixzz0w6kri0 sY
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/08/08/2010-08-08_how_public_worker_pensions_are.html#ixzz0w6kF06 o0
He did nothing illegal. At 44, Hugo Tassone retired from the Yonkers police force with an annual pension of $101,333 - thanks to overtime pay he tacked on to his $74,000 salary. Tassone told The New York Times it was the pension he could collect after 20 years of service that attracted him to the job in the first place.
He’s not alone. In the last decade, half of the police and firefighters who retired in Yonkers collected pensions that exceeded their base pay, in (at least one case) by as much as 75%.
Don’t blame the officers. New York’s pension rules make it pay more to retire than to work. And the horrible habits here are a window on a national pension picture that’s looking more disastrous by the day.
The bill is now coming due.
Professor Joshua Rauh of Northwestern University projects that even if public sector plans earn 8% on their investments, four states - Illinois, New Jersey, Connecticut and Indiana - will run out of assets to pay retirees by the end of the decade. States and local governments will soon find themselves up against a painful tradeoff: between closing schools and libraries and cutting other essential services or paying inflated pensions to 50-year-old retirees.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/08/08/2010-08-08_how_public_worker_pensions_are.html#ixzz0w6kri0 sY
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/08/08/2010-08-08_how_public_worker_pensions_are.html#ixzz0w6kF06 o0